About us

Campus Crops is a student run urban gardening initiative at McGill University's downtown campus. We want to grow food on campus, by students, for students. We have been running garden behind the School of Environment building at 3534 University since 2007. In 2009 we started a terrace garden behind the James Administration building. We're really excited to keep improving these two spaces, and need lots of helping hands for the summer ahead! Get in touch and get gardening!

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Where? Meet at the Roddick's Gates at 2:30pm; destination is on the 13th floor of the 1455 Maisonneuve E. (N.B. You must get to the 12th floor, turn left, right, left, and take the stairs to the 13th floor)

What?You are invited to join Campus Crops in a tour of the Concordia Greenhouse, located at the downtown campus of Concordia University.

The tour will be a quick go-around of the physical installations of the greenhouse, accompanied by the presentation of some cool projects and activities offered by the greenhouse. Participants are invited to ask questions about the involvement of the greenhouse at its host university and in the greater urban agriculture movement in Montreal.

The tour will be followed by a movie at 5pm (not hosted by Campus Crops)."Know Your Mushrooms" is a movie about the beautiful world of fungi and their multiple applications, from food to bioremediation.

About the Greenhouse

"[The Concordia Greenhouse is]an all-organic space geared towards education and research into urban sustainability, community building and food security.

We are are collectively run organization that seeks to provide a safe space for group decision-making, with a foundation in anti-oppression. The greenhouse provides an environment for workshops, film screenings, research projects and community events, and is a springboard for spreading innovative solutions through popular education initiatives. We grow food and teas in the greenhouse year-round. In the spring and summer months we plant and maintain a number of gardens on campus. In the past two years, we have transformed our outdoor gardens into urban agriculture training sites, where participants of the City Farm School program work with trained horticulturalists to hone their skills."

They also have many interesting projects going on, from aquaponics and vermicomposting, to the City Farm School, an internship in urban agriculture, and Vert Ta Ville, a program of skill sharing and resource trading between urban agriculture organizations on the Montreal Island.

About the movie

DescriptionFree admission, popcorn and tea!
“Ron Mann investigates the miraculous, near-secret world of fungi. Visionaries Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans lead us on a hunt for the wild mushroom and the deeper cultural experiences attached to the mysterious fungi. The oldest and largest living organisms recorded on Earth are both fungi. And their use by a new, maverick breed of scientists and thinkers has proven vital in the cleansing of sites despoiled by toxins and as a "clean" pesticide, among many other environmentally friendly applications. Combining material filmed at the Telluride Mushroom Fest with animation and archival footage, along with a neo-psychedelic soundtrack by The Flaming Lips, this film opens the doors to perception, taking the audience on an extraordinary trip.”

Monday, October 7, 2013

We talk about day-to-day management of the group, activities,
orientation, envisioning, etc. Not very formal unless it needs to, it is
for people who are interested in making decisions regarding the
struggles and activities of Campus Crops.

Workshop meetings - Saturdays at 2pm.

Organizing
tool for everyone who has interest in food politics and
agriculture/gardening, and ideas for workshops, events and activities to
bring those topics to other people at McGill or elsewhere.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

We share with you here the zine/guide we put up for Rad Frosh 2013. It contains a non-exhaustive list of CSAs, markets, local food, and organic/sustainable stores in Montréal, as well as resources for urban gardeners and freegans.

You can download it in web format or print format, or simply read it below.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Join us at the garden for a 30-minute workshop on seed-saving on Saturday August 31 at 4:30pm. We will demonstrate, using plants we grow in the garden, how to save seeds from most of the crops you love.

Seed-saving, if done properly, is a cheap way to get quality seeds for the next year's garden with just a little bit of extra planning and work. With more experience, you can start selecting seeds from particular plants to get crops that will suit your preferences.

The workshop will be followed by the usual gardening tasks, namely watering and/or harvesting.
Find the Facebook event here.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

It's been a while since we posted anything about our crops. Hopefully your plants have been growing as well (or even better) than ours so far!

First of all, we have been uploading photos of our gardens regularly since early July. A slideshow showing the growth of our crops through time can be found on the right-hand side of the blog ("Watch the garden grow!").

And we also finally built our own spiral garden! We had to find bricks first, so we ended up making it quite late and our herb seedlings didn't really appreciate, but now it's up and the herbs are not doing that bad. Have a look!

Freshly made.

Freshly planted.

About a month later.

=================================

We also started harvesting some of our crops and are waiting for others to fully ripen.

The rattlesnake beans.

The cherry tomatoes.

The peas.

The strawberry blite.

The spaghetti squash (so many!!).

The beets.

The ground cherries.

The pepper.

The sunflowers.

The tomatillos.

The tomatoes.

==================================Although our strawberry blite has started to die (we're not even sure if that's normal), a ton of strawberry blite seedlings have popped out of the grown to replace the dead plants.

Dying one by one.

Many strawberry blite seedlings replacing their parent plant. Obviously, the two bigger seedlings in the middle of the picture are strawberry blite, but so are all the tiny seedlings around them.

Basically a mat of seedlings. The pink-red berries of the strawberry blite can hold a good amount of seeds.

A close-up view of the seedling mat. Somewhat pleasant to look at.

======================================

Quite a messy blog post, but we hope you enjoyed the photos. We'll close on a top view of the whole garden, taken this August 5, 2013. We'll be back with more news from the garden, some workshops and possibly other cool stuff for the school year!

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Note that the seasonal availability may change depending on the growing season, the region, the specific market, the producers, etc.

Also, corn, oats, rye, buckwheat, barley, spelt, kamut and soy DO grow in Quebec, contrarily to what some people think. SOBAYA noodles are a good example of a product made of locally-grown grains (made in Quebec from grains grown in Quebec).

You can apply for multiple positions but please submit a different cv for each position applied for.

The Midnight
Kitchen is a non-profit, volunteer run collective dedicated to serving
healthy food to as many people as possible. We aim to empower
individuals and communities by providing a working alternative to
current market based systems for food collection and distribution. We
provide education on food issues, and a space for an exchange of ideas
within the community. We recognize that much of the politics surrounding
food production and distribution are part of a larger system of
oppression. By reclaiming control over the distribution of food in our
community we are acting in the pursuit of social and environmental
justice and we will support others who share these goals. We organize
and act according to principles of anti-oppression.

*The Midnight
Kitchen is a collective that uses consensus decision making and is
non-hierarchical, all applicants should be prepared to work
collaboratively and make decisions in a group*

We conduct hiring on the basis of employment equity.
Employment equity is designed to compensate for the nonexistence of a
level playing field with regards to people's experiences and job
qualifications, given the structural injustice that affects marginalized
groups within capitalism. These groups include but are not limited to:
indigenous people, people of color, women, queer people, trans* people,
people with disabilities, and working class people.

if you wish to be considered for employment equity,
include the following sentence in your cover letter ‘I would like to be
included for employment equity.’ Please note that we do not require
applicants to specify the basis on which they are applying for
employment equity.

------ Descriptions Below -------

1. Outreach Coordinator

Networking with other organizations both on and off campus.

Work a minimum of 3h/week in the kitchen (i.e. at least one coordinating shift)

Organizing a minimum of 2 workshops on social justice topics and other
events per semester including the summer, this includes coordinating
the annual ‘Put Your Politics where Your Mouth Is’ series, as directed
by the Midnight Kitchen collective

Working to update the MK library and purchase new books

Communicating with Alternative Libraries database and attempting to incorporate the Midnight Kitchen Library

Attending Midnight Kitchen collective meetings and updating the collective on political programming, networking, and outreach projects.

Designing workshops that Midnight Kitchen can present

Coordinating making and serving food at the Annual Anarchist Bookfair (summer)

Writing a detailed exit report

Maintaining a log of hours worked

Working with the collective to brainstorm and generate ways that Midnight Kitchen can take political action outside of daily servings and solidarity servings

Coordinating two issues of the Midnight Kitchen newsletter a year (in collaboration with volunteers and the collective)

Desired skillset:

* Knowledge of social justice and anti-oppression

* Organized and able to work autonomously

* Creative and flexible

-* Outgoing

*Experience with consensus decision-making

* Good communication skills

* Experience collaborating on special projects

* Experience with event or workshop planning

* Experience working with other Montreal community based organizations and knowledge of them

* Bilingual (asset)

* Cooking skills (asset)

* Knowledge of radical student organising at McGill (asset)

2. Volunteer Coordinator

Individual responsibilities include:

Creating and updating volunteer schedules

Work at least 3h a week in the kitchen (coordinate 1 shift)

Responding to requests from individuals wishing to become involved with Midnight Kitchen

Working with outreach coordinators on outreach and political materials

Reporting to the collective at meetings regarding volunteer management and recruitment

Bottom-lining strategizing and generating mechanisms for recruitment and retention of new collective members

Acting as a liaison for incoming volunteers

Working with kitchen coordinator to coordinate volunteer and kitchen orientations

Work with other students services with paid
positions to figure out possibilities of a union, for people who work
under SSMU.

Desired Skillset:

*Experience with accounting and Spred sheets (necessary)

*knowledgeable of Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) finances, administration and policy (asset)

* General knowledge of social justice and anti-oppression

* Organizational skills

* Ability to work autonomously

* Strong communication skills

* Experience in applying for grants (asset)

* Bilingual (asset)

*Experience navigating bureaucracy

4. Kitchen Coordinator

Individual responsibilities include:

Working with Administrative/Finance Coordinator to ensure replacement and repairs of broken equipment

Working with Administrative/Finance Coordinator to coordinate bulk food order

Attending collective meetings and reporting back on kitchen operations and logistics

Working with Administrative/Finance Coordinator and Midnight Kitchen collective to research the potential for large equipment purchases, as needed.

Increasing the physical accessibility of space and safety

Working a minimum of 3h/week in the kitchen (i.e. at least one coordinating shift)

Coordinating food safety trainings as necessary

Working with the Administrative/Finance Coordinator on making
small purchases to maintain the daily functioning of the kitchen (i.e.
keeping the kitchen stocked with dish rags, soap, oven mitts, etc.)

Writing a detailed exit report

*Working with SSMU on booking the kitchen and other policies, coordinating all kitchen bookings.

Desired Skillset:

* General knowledge of social justice and anti-oppression

* Organizational skills

* Ability to work autonomously

*Experience with grant writing (asset)

* Strong communication skills

* Bilingual (asset)

*Experience managing bureaucracy

*Experience working in a commercial kitchen, knowledge of food security measures.

5. Pickup Coordinator/Driver

Tasks include:

Driving to Midnight Kitchen food pickup locations, collecting food donations, and delivering it to the Midnight Kitchen two times per week

Doing other driving based on organizational needs as determined by the collective

Liaising with the Midnight Kitchen collective to ensure that all pickups occur as scheduled

Working with the Midnight Kitchen collective to communicate with food donors and maintain positive relationships

Writing a detailed exit report

Desired Skillset:

* General knowledge of social justice and anti-oppression

* A Valid Drivers’ license

* Access to a vehicle of sufficient size for the three weekly pickups

* Ability to lift boxes that weigh approximately 20lbs

- Bilingualism (an asset)

Tasks shared among all paid positions include (Finance, Outreach, Kitchen, and Volunteer):

Working on internal relationship building and internal capacity of the
collective. This includes having a minimum of one workshop on:
consensus, facilitation, and anti-oppression in the fall and winters
semesters (total of 3 workshops/semester). Suggestion: Coordinate a
minimum of 3 collective dinners or events each semester.

Keeping the office and kitchen clean and organized including keeping computer and printer functional

Maintaining communication with the Students’ Society of McGill University executive

Respond to emails and other Midnight Kitchen correspondence, including emails, in a timely fashion.

Coordinate hiring procedures and have positions evaluated and
contracts approved by the time new people are hired (including summer
position)

Work on documentation and maintain collective
memory (including keeping records of your work, and compiling and
organizing collective and committee meeting minutes)

Being aware of and up-to-date on all policy

Generating strategy/mechanisms for actively recruitment of new collective members throughout the year

Saturday, June 8, 2013

The best time to plant potatoes is from mid-March to mid-May, when the soil has reached a temperature of 16°C. Plant the each potato seedling about 12-14 inches (30-45 cm) apart. If you're working with a potato box, add enough soil to completely bury the potatoes. In a garden, you can dig a trench (or individual holes) about 30 cm deep and put just enough soil to completely bury the potatoes (don't fill the trench or holes to the top yet). In both cases and if working with potato seedlings, make sure the shoots are facing upward, and make sure not to break them while burying the seedings.

Make sure that the potatoes are planted in a full sun area (at least 6 hours of sun a day), and keep the soil moist but not waterlogged. If the soil gets too dry, there will be hollow areas inside the potatoes, but if it's too wet, the potatoes will rot. Potatoes should be planted in a soil with good drainage (sandy to loam, clearly not clay), otherwise they will most certainly rot.

Once the plants have reached about 30 cm in height, add 20-25 cm of soil around the plants, either from between the rows in a garden, or from elsewhere if using a potato box. If in a garden, the initial "hilling" will most likely consist of completely filling back the trench or holes to ground level. Hill again once the plants reach another 20-30 cm in height. Repeat until plants are dead, in September or October when it gets colder (if they die earlier, it may be because the potatoes are rotting).

Potatoes do not compete well with weeds, so keep their environment weed free throughout the season. You may also want to remove any flowers if the plant blossoms.

Here's how our planting went:

Since our potato box will be sitting on concrete all summer, we added some left-over rocks we were using for our containers at the bottom of the potato box. We added about 10 cm. That should not be necessary if the potato box is a few centimeters above the ground, or if it's placed in the garden. In fact, we're not even sure if it was necessary in our case, since our soil is of good quality and should drain easily, but we did it anyway.

Our potato box has been lifted from the ground with bricks in order to keep the wood well aerated and prevent rot. We didn't have anything to keep the soil from touching the ground, though, so that's why we added rocks.

We then added another piece of geotextile over the rock layer and filled the potato box with about 15-20 cm of soil. We'll probably keep on putting geotextile to prevent the soil from touching the wood, as wood-soil contact may accelerate wood decomposition.

Then we dug the holes and placed the seedlings.

And finally filled the holes.

Some of our seedlings seemed to have started developing leaves at the end of some shoots, so we left those sticking out of the ground. It might not have been a good idea, as three days later the leaves seem to be dying. We're not sure if that's because it's been rainy and the soil is too wet, if the quite cold temperature shocked the seedlings and/or the leaves during transplantation, if we should have buried the whole seedlings, or if it doesn't matter. Time will tell.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Because it's good to know, here's one of the multiple ways you can make your own self-watering container. This method has the advantage of being both cheap and homemade, yet doesn't make the container as heavy as with the rock reservoir method.

What's a self-watering container, you ask? Well, self-watering containers do not literally water themselves, but they do help water plants less often.

The principle is quite simple: water is poured down a pipe directly in a water reservoir, sitting under the soil. There, a wick takes the water from the reservoir to the soil. As the plant(s) use the water made available to them in the soil, the wick takes more water from the reservoir to the root zone of the plant(s). In some way, the plants water themselves (but they don't, also, you know).

You'll need:

- a plastic container that will offer enough space for a decent-sized water reservoir and the roots of your plant, often at least 30 cm in width, length and depth for vegetable crops; check up the spacing requirement and soil depth needed for the plant(s) you want to grow in your container if you're not sure what size you need

- a sealant (maybe)

- plastic boards

- PVC pipe, about 1 inch diameter

- geotextile, as cheap as you can get

- perlite

- good soil

- compost (maybe)

- something that cuts

- a saw

- a drill or something to pierce a hole through hard plastic

The plastic we use for this model is Coroplast, which you can probably find at your local hardware store, or at your local deputy/MP/whatever office not long after an election period (or in the streets during the election period, but this is not usually recommended and Campus Crops doesn't suggest you do it either oh heeeellll noo!). Other types of plastic can work too, but they need to be both quite rigid, while being soft enough so you can cut them quite easily.

PVC pipes, geotextile, perlite and soil can all be bought at a hardware store too (don't ask your MP for those, though).

Anywho, let's unleash them pictures.

THIS IS IT

1) No matter what type of container you use, make sure it's watertight near the bottom, and drill an overflow hole anywhere between 7-15 cm from the bottom of the container, depending on the size of said container (you want as much soil as possible in there, but too much soil for too little water won't help either). If your container is not already watertight, we suggest using this sealant, or any other sealant that works in water, works with plastic, and is not toxic. Extra points if the product description mentions that it's safe for sealing aquariums (aquaria? whatever, if it's good for the fish, it won't poison your vegetables).

2) Cut your plastic into strips that will fit lengthwise and widthwise. For the width of the strips, see step 3. Calculate you'll need a strip every 20-25 cm in both directions (lengthwise and widthwise) at the bottom of your container. Cut slits into the strips where they will intersect with other strips.

3) Arrange the strips into a grid pattern at the bottom of your container. An important thing about the width of the strips is that the grid must be about 1 inch (2.5 cm) above the overflow hole you pierced in your container. This is to ensure a good airflow in the soil and the reservoir even when the latter is full of water. Otherwise, expect anaerobic conditions, pathogens, diseases, death, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Fits perfectly!

4) Cut another piece of plastic to cover the bottom of your container. Put it over the grid. Voilà! That's your reservoir!

Some people like to leave the corners uncovered, either to use them at wick (more about this later), or to put the PVC pipe. If you don't want to do that, make sure you cut out a hole somewhere to insert your pipe.

Fits perfectly!

5) Saw your PVC pipe. Make it long enough to stick out of the container by a few inches. Saw an end at an angle, otherwise it may lay flat on the bottom of the container and water will stay stuck in the pipe instead of going into the reservoir. Insert the pipe in a corner or along one side of your container.

6) Make a wick. A wick is something that will get the water from the reservoir to the soil (by capillary action), to make it accessible to the plant. Without a wick, the water would just sit at the bottom of the container and your tomatoes would be like "Meh."

A wick must be 1) about as high as your reservoir, 2) durable, and 3) full of small holes (so the water can get in easily but the wicking material doesn't get out).

7) Cut out a hole for your wick.

8) Cut a geotextile piece that is about 5-10 cm wider and longer than your container. Cut a slit in it and insert your wick. Make sure you cut the slit vis-à-vis the hole for the wick in the container. Put the wick in the hole in the container and lay the geotextile so it extends a bit on each side.

9) Put enough soil in your container to fill your wick. Mix in some perlite (about a fifth of the soil you added). Dump the mix into the wick. Perlite helps keep the soil light and well aerated, which various macro-organisms normally do in the ground. If perlite and soil are not mixed together before being added to the wick, it can be quite hard to make sure the wick contains a good mixture of both when the container is full.

If you prefer to mix your soil and perlite before adding them to the container, skip this step.

10) Fill the container with soil and top with perlite. Make sure to keep the geotextile on the sides as you fill the container with soil. Mix thoroughly the soil and perlite. What we're looking for here is the unfamous reversed-color chocolate chip cookie dough mix, where the perlite would be the white chocolate chip and the soil would be the chocolate cookie dough.

If you have "weird" chocolate chip cookie tastes (not sure there's a standard or anything about what is a correct cookie dough-to-chocolate chip ratio), go for 4 parts of soil per part of perlite, or 20% perlite.

Here's an awesome list of pretty much all the urban agriculture initiatives in Montréal, made by Sheena from the Radical Montreal blog. The blog is a great resource to stay abreast of all workshops and events of all kinds happening in the city.

City of Montreal Community Gardens-Gardens in 18 boroughs for community use-In some boroughs, a gardening instructor visits the garden regularly to give advice to gardeners. Some boroughs offer adapted gardens for persons with reduced mobility. -Materials provided include soil, a water source, tool shed or toolbox, tables, fences, sand, paint and flowers.http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=5977,68887600&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL